Experience in a Community in Essay, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

The Worst Hard Times by Timothy Egan conveys the story of farmers who decided to prosper on the plains during the 1800s, in places such as Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. They decided to make living, and some stayed during the worst droughts in the United States in 1930s. High temperatures and dust storms destroyed the area, killing animals and humans. This competently book reveals the prosperity for many, later revealing the time of the skinny cows. The story is based on the testimonies of the survivors or through their diaries/journals and on historical research. The author describes the struggles of the nesters, in which Egan clearly blames these catastrophic events on the settler’s hubris.

Timothy Egan writes the book The Worst Hard Time. In the book, it has a build up to how the Dust Bowl occurred, and it explains the effects of the Dust Bowl through families that were in the plains. Then to the end of the book, things are starting to turn around when Franklin D. Roosevelt visits the Great Plains. Timothy Egan’s thesis is that from the beginning, the whole United States starts to tip the balance of the Great Plains, which led to the Dust Bowl, and the people hitting rock bottom; however, two opposite ideas come together with faith that the Great Plains can be rebalance. Egan writes in an inspiring tone that gives a feeling of understanding how the people felt in the worst time, and he stays on topic of his main point but is slightly bias.

The Great Depression was a very influential era in American history, affecting many future generations. One of the most prevalent impacts it had on society was the extreme poverty that swept across the nation, affecting both people in cities and in the country. The main cause for this poverty was the mass loss of jobs among the middle class. Millions lost their jobs and consequently their homes. Families lived out of tents and cars in shanty towns or Hoovervilles. In these camps, many people didn’t have their basic human needs met, children and adults alike starved. They lived in clothes that were caked in dirt and tattered, too small for growing children and too cold for the frail elderly. Government relief programs attempted to help but offered little support to the now impoverished families of the millions that lost everything.

The stock market crash of 1929 sent the nation spiraling into a state of economic paralysis that became known as the Great Depression. As industries shrank and businesses collapsed or cut back, up to 25% of Americans were left unemployed. At the same time, the financial crisis destroyed the life savings of countless Americans (Modern American Poetry). Food, housing and other consumable goods were in short supply for most people (Zinn 282). This widespread state of poverty had serious social repercussions for the country.

In 1929, the United States stock market crashed, causing the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, many Americans were starving, homeless, and struggling with unemployment issues. By the mid-1930s, unemployment had reached twenty-five percent in the United States, forcing many Americans to live and sleep in shanty towns commonly referred to as “Hoovervilles.”. Based on the letters to FDR, we can assume that many American families still faced unemployment and eviction issues. Within a letter wrote to FDR by an individual know only by the initials of C.L.F., they state, “The realtors are putting the people out when they

In view of the fact that consumers are not purchasing as much food, farmers are struggling in saving their farms. Also, the drought or also known as the dust storms are contributing to this reason. Since people were not buying as much the farmers could not afford to keep the farms, and the drought was making it even more difficult to grow food. Therefore, unable to make payments they would either file for bankruptcy or may be foreclosed. With these failures came unemployment, this is cause by not having enough jobs for people. The unemployment rate rose up to 25 percent, some areas where even higher than that. Hoovervilles and hoboes where the new social groups created by unemployment. Hoovervilles are people who lived in shacks on the out skirts of towns or parks to accommodate the homeless. Hoboes were people who took to the road. They would travel from town to town in search of work, food and housing. A lot of them would try to travel by boarding a moving train this was extremely dangerous. Hoboes develop a language all to their own to tell each other of honest and dishonest opportunities. The Great Depression took a highly emotional toll on every American.

The Depression changed social structure in America forever. “The real story of the 1930’s is how individual families endured and survived, whether battling the despair of hunger and unemployment in the city of the fear of unending drought and forced migration in the dust bowl of the Great plains.” (Press, Petra pg 6)

During the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, the United States underwent a series of changes that had a drastic effect on people across the nation. As the economy began to slow to a halt, millions of people were left broke and without jobs. As the country’s farmers were paralyzed with debt, food prices increased radically (McElvaine). During the mid-1930s, a series of droughts coupled with poor agricultural methods led to years of soil erosion and dust storms known as the Dust Bowl, a catastrophe that destroyed farms throughout the Southern Great Plains (Shafer, Low). As a result, many farmers were forced to abandon their land to seek employment elsewhere. These migrant workers, attracted by the fertility and familiarity of the area, traveled to California towns such as Salinas, where they labored tirelessly for wealthy planters (Cayton, Gorn, Williams). The events of the Great Depression Era, following years of difficulty and poverty, paved the way to an entirely new way of life for Americans.

Families had to split up in search for work and many children got jobs to make extra money for their families. In 1933, when Roosevelt took office, “24.9% of the total workforce or 12,830,000 people were unemployed” according to the FDR Library. This statistic shows just how much the average American was struggling to keep themselves and their families afloat. The FDR Library also states that “drastic drops in farm commodity prices resulted in farmers losing their lands and homes due to foreclosure” and that “gangs of unemployed youth, whose families could no longer support them, rode the rails as hobos in search of work.” The previous excerpts depict America’s loss of stability because the people providing food were out of jobs and parents had to send their children away since they could not afford to care for them any further. Thankfully, President Roosevelt and his administration stepped in soon afterward to correct the

After the Civil War, America started experiencing prosperous times in terms economic boom. However, in September, 1929 things took a different twist when the stock prices fell abruptly, eventually leading to the stock market crash the following October. This, combined with rising personal debt triggered the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse since the onset of industrialization. The ensuing effect was collapse of banks, closure of businesses and a quarter of the employed Americans lost their jobs. Further, families became homeless and some resorted to camping out on the Great Lawn in New York City, which was an empty reservoir then.

The period between the Civil War and the Great Depression was the most rapid period of urbanization in the nation’s history. During the late 1800’s the population expanded about four times in urban areas. Young reformers believed poverty could be alleviated with proper policy, focused assistance, and better government regulation. The efforts of these reformers would later be termed “progressivism,” and this period would become known as the “Progressive Era”. Negative consequences came of urbanization.

The book I have chosen to review is Decade of Despair: Winnebago County During the Great Depression 1929-1939. Authors are Werner E. Braatz and Thomas J. Rowland. Copyright 2009 by University Press of America. Published Lanham, Maryland 20706. ISBN-13: 978-0761846406.

Most novels tell stories from the point of view of one or a few characters, but The Worst Hard Time captures the perspectives of hundreds of people. The point of view also shifts periodically per chapter, and tells the nation’s tragedy from each character’s unique perspective. The setting also shifts with the characters – the stories are not all from the area of the Dust Bowl. The economic downturn affected almost everyone in the nation, and stories of a broad range of people such as stockbrokers, CEOs, and Native Americans are told. Many of the characters in the book symbolize particular roles citizens had in the problems causing the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. For example, Bam White, the first character introduced, represents the thousands of farmers who were saved economically by the southern plains – only to be betrayed later by the Dust Bowl. The story of George Ehrlich, a German from Russia, is representative of the racism

The Worst Hard Time takes place during the Great Depression of the U.S. in the 20’s and 30’s. It tells the story of several different people and groups of people during this tough time in American history, at times comparing it to before and after the time frame of the Depression. I chose this book because it shows the story of people not only facing the economic decline, but also have been betrayed by the Earth itself in the form of “dusters”. Not only are people suffering from poverty, an entirely new problem is introduced when people get “dust pneumonia” from the dusters.

     With the continually worsening conditions, and the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the United States was thrown into the biggest economical disaster of our history. Everyone, excluding the rich upper class, became poor and most unemployed. The majority of the American populace found themselves living in ‘shantytowns’ or ‘Hoovervilles’ as they later became to be known, which consisted of many cramped shacks constructed from whatever was available. This meant old burnt-out cars, cardboard boxes, random pieces of lumber, and anything else that people could find. Times truly were tough. It was a daily